At this point, it's a foregone conclusion that Marvel's former president and chairman Stan Lee will have a cameo in every single movie based on a Marvel Comics character whether or not he had any direct association with that character during his lengthy career. But how many of the upcoming movies can claim that he's already been written into the script?

When we spoke to Zombieland creators Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese a few months back, they were hesitant about saying much about the Venom script they'd been working on. (You can read what they could say here.) As we were going through our lengthy interview with them, we found a little missed tidbit that might thrill Marvel fans, as they admitted to us that Lee will appear in the Venom movie and that they've even already written his part!

"Oh, yeah. Stan Lee is in it," Reese told us. "I feel like that's the one thing we can say. He does appear in our script, and we're very specific about where he is and why. May he live forever. Let's hope he's in many movies to come."

Check out ShockTillYouDrop.com next week for our very lengthy interview with Wernick and Reese talking specifically about Zombieland, which comes out on October 9.

In a somewhat surprising turn of events, The LA Times is reporting that Chronicle director Josh Trank is in talks to direct Venom, a feature film based on the "Spider-Man" character.

First appearing in the comic book series as an alien costume worn by Spider-Man in "The Amazing Spider-Man" #252 in 1984, it was several years before the creature left Peter Parker and merged with photographer Eddie Brock, forming the antihero known as Venom. Since then, the character has appeared in a variety of different forms and bonded with several different hosts. In the "Ultimate" Marvel Universe, the suit has a more terrestrial origin, created by Parker and Brock's scientist parents in an attempt to cure cancer.

Venom has appeared on the big screen before in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3, played by Topher Grace. It is unlikely that the proposed film will bear any connection to that take on the character, though it remains to be seen if the project will connect in any form to July 3rd's The Amazing Spider-Man.

Sony has allegedly toyed with the idea of a Venom spinoff in the past, but this new version is rumored to be unconnected to previous drafts. Check back for studio confirmation and official details as soon as they become available.

Earlier today, Matt Patches over at Hollywood.com had a chance to talk with The Amazing Spider-Man producers Avi Arad and Matthew Tolmach, and during the inteview, he took the opportunity to ask them about Sony's planned Venom movie, which Chronicle director Josh Trank is rumored to be directing.

With the success of The Avengers, it makes perfect sense for Sony to want the part of the Marvel Universe they acquired during the '90s to work together as a whole, so one can expect that they'll take a similar real-life science approach with Venom's origin story as they do with Spider-Man and The Lizard in the upcoming reboot.

Arad explained the bigger picture plans for the Venom movie:

"It's an Eddie Brock story. We want to be as close to the comics as possible. Especially in Eddie Brock's story. But again, pseudo-science is becoming science. All these tidbits about webs, artificial webs, is a huge industry now. Spiderwebs have unique qualities that will be huge for communications, fibers, and so forth. So we have taken the approach that we want to make the huge amazing movie about Eddie."

"He was a journalist. He had the wrong story, he got in trouble for it, he got fired," Tolmach continued, going on to explain how they're approaching characters like Venom. "The whole essence to us for the Marvel characters is stay close to the bible, stay close to the emotional story, and the rest is fun. Look for the worlds to make sense with one another."

"Hopefully,all these worlds will live together in peace someday," he added, which gives us the biggest possible hint of what they might have planned.

While there's nothing in The Amazing Spider-Man that even hints at Eddie Brock or his alien symbiote alter ego, that doesn't means that the already-planned 2014 sequel won't try to set something up or that they're eventually building to having Spider-Man fight Venom in a third installment.

Oh, wait. They already tried that.

Regardless, you can look for a lot more on Sony's The Amazing Spider-Man, including our own interviews with director Marc Webb and the cast in the weeks leading up to its North American release on July 3.